Thulani Davis is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist, an Associate Professor and a Nellie Y. McKay Fellow in the African American Studies Department. Her most recent book is “The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom.” She has written the scripts for several award-winning documentaries, including Louis Massiah’s “W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices” (1996), and developed the concept for Blackside’s series, “I’ll Make Me a World: A Century of African American Arts” (1999). Davis has been a recipient of a Vilas Early Investigators Award from the University of Wisconsin. She was awarded the Lerner Prize in American Studies at New York University and is a past recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award, and a Charles H. Revson Fellowship on the Future of New York City.
A word from Ethelene Whitmire, Chair of African American Studies:
What can we say about Thulani Davis? She’s a playwright, director, Grammy Award winner, screenwriter, poet, novelist, memoirist, journalist, librettist and so much more. We’ve known her for the last few years at UW as an exemplary scholar and teacher. Her latest book was called a “masterpiece.”